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Trust in judicial institutions: an empirical approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2012

LUDIVINE ROUSSEY  and
BRUNO DEFFAINS
LUDIVINE ROUSSEY*
Affiliation:
EconomiX, University Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 92000 Nanterre, France
BRUNO DEFFAINS*
Affiliation:
Department of Law and Economics, Sorbonne University, Paris, France, and European Business School, Wiesbaden, Germany
*
*Email: l.roussey@gmail.com
**Email: bruno.deffains@u-paris2.fr
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Abstract:

This paper investigates the relationship between judicial resources and individuals’ trust in the justice system. We argue that the justice budget is likely to have a positive and significant impact on individuals’ trust in justice, thanks to its role as a signal when individuals face uncertainty regarding the judicial environment. We test this hypothesis empirically using three different budget-related variables: the justice budget per incoming case, the number of magistrates and the intensity of legal aid. Across our three regressions, we find a positive and significant correlation between judicial resources and individuals’ declared trust in the justice system. This positive relationship is robust to the introduction of socio-demographic, cultural, institutional and economic control variables. We finally offer empirical support to the intuition that the effect of the justice budget on trust in justice is likely to be greater when individuals are more satisfied with the level of democracy in their country.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 351 - 369
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2012

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank the members of the CEPEJ working group on the evaluation of judicial systems for kindly providing data and fruitful interactions. We are grateful to Eve Caroli for her very constructive comments. We also thank Eshien Chong for his enthusiastic help and Henri Fraisse, Céline Bignebat, Claudine Desrieux, Claude Parthenay, Massimo D'Antoni and three anonymous referees of the journal for their valuable suggestions. Of course, all errors remain ours.

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